Doritos designed for women?

Katie Marzullo Image
ByKatie Marzullo KGO logo
Tuesday, February 6, 2018
Doritos designed for women?
Attention females! Have you ever wished you had a Dorito made especially for you? Well, you may be in luck.

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Attention females! Have you ever wished you had a Dorito made especially for you? Well, you may be in luck.

In a podcast with Freakonomics, the CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi, said the company is looking into making Doritos for women.

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She explained that men love to lick their fingers and pour the last few crumbs straight from the bag into their mouth. She went on to say that women don't like to eat that way... so a new chip is being considered-- one that doesn't crunch so loudly or leave as much nacho cheese dust on one's fingertips.

Many women have taken to Twitter to denounce the notion as sexist.

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The president of Women's March Bay Area said, "They don't want us to crunch? Well they can hear us roar."

Here's an excerpt from the Freakonomics podcast.

Stephen Dubner interviews PepsiCo CEO, Indra Nooyi:

DUBNER: I understand that men and women eat chips very differently. Can you tell us the differences?

NOOYI: When you eat out of a flex bag - one of our single-serve bags - especially as you watch a lot of the young guys eat the chips, they love their Doritos, and they lick their fingers with great glee, and when they reach the bottom of the bag they pour the little broken pieces into their mouth, because they don't want to lose that taste of the flavor, and the broken chips in the bottom. Women would love to do the same, but they don't. They don't like to crunch too loudly in public. And they don't lick their fingers generously and they don't like to pour the little broken pieces and the flavor into their mouth.

DUBNER: So is there a male and female version of chips that you're playing with, or no?

NOOYI: It's not a male and female as much as "are there snacks for women that can be designed and packaged differently?" And yes, we are looking at it, and we're getting ready to launch a bunch of them soon. For women, low-crunch, the full taste profile, not have so much of the flavor stick on the fingers, and how can you put it in a purse? Because women love to carry a snack in their purse. The whole design capability we built in PepsiCo was to allow design to work with innovation. Not just on packaging colors, but to go through the entire cycle, and say, "All the way to the product in the pantry, or how it's being carried around, or how they eat it in the car, or drink it in the car, what should be the design of the product, the package, the experience, so that we can influence the entire chain?"

To listen to the Freakonomics interview in full:click here.